The landlady of this house is very stout and reminds me very much of the Grand Duchess of Sondersburg-Augustenburg:  her manner when she showed us the rooms was very like that of the Grand Duchess; only perhaps a little firmer and more authoritative.  But it appears that they are probably not related, as the landlady’s name is Mrs. O’Halloran, which is, I think, Scotch.

When we arrived it was already time for dinner so we went downstairs to it at once.  The dining-room was underground in the basement.  It was very crowded and stuffy, and there was a great clatter of dishes and a heavy smell of food.  Most of the people were already seated, but there was an empty place at the head of one of the tables and Uncle William moved straight towards that.  Uncle was wearing, as I said, his frock coat and his celluloid collar and he walked into the room with quite an air, in something of the way that he used to come into the great hall of the Neues Palais at Potsdam, only that in these clothes it looked different.  As Uncle entered the room he waved his hand and said, “Let no one rise!” I remember that when Uncle said this at the big naval dinner at Kiel it made a great sensation as an example of his ready tact.  He realised that if they had once risen there would have been great difficulty in their order of procedure for sitting down again.  He was afraid that the same difficulty might have been felt here in the boarding house.  But I don’t think it would, and I don’t think that they were going to stand up, anyway.  They just went on eating.  I noticed one cheap-looking young man watching Uncle with a sort of half smile as he moved towards his seat.  I heard him say to his neighbour, “Some scout, eh?”

The food was so plain and so greasy that I could hardly eat it.  But I have noticed that it is a strange thing about Uncle that he doesn’t seem to know what he eats at all.  He takes all this poor stuff that they put before him to be the same delicacies that we had at the Neues Palais and Sans Souci.  “Is this a pheasant?” he asked when the servant maid passed him his dish of meat.  I heard the mean young man whisper, “I guess not.”  Presently some hash was brought in and Uncle said, “Ha!  A Salmi!  Ha! excellent!” I could see that Mrs. O’Halloran, the landlady, who sat at the other end of the table, was greatly pleased.

I was surprised to find—­because it is so hard to get used to the change of things in our new life—­that all the people went on talking just the same after Uncle sat down.  At the palace at Potsdam nobody ever spoke at dinner unless Uncle William first addressed him, and then he was supposed to give a sort of bow and answer as briefly as possible so as not to interrupt the flow of Uncle William’s conversation.  Generally Uncle talked and all the rest listened.  His conversation was agreed by everybody to be wonderful.  Princes, admirals, bishops, artists, scholars and everybody united in declaring that Uncle William showed a range of knowledge